summer Archives - Nothing good rhymes with Charlotte

8 things to do in Copenhagen with a toddler

07/07/2019 by Charlotte Leave a Comment

The thing about going on holiday with a toddler, is that no matter where you go or what you do, it’ll still be hard work. Holidays are no longer about rest, they’re about change. They’re about doing your usual billion parenting tasks somewhere else. They’re about picking up your family, going somewhere new, and making lovely memories together – and ideally paying somebody else to cook at least one of your meals each day, and not having to think about the washing up.

We went to Copenhagen from 1 – 6 July 2019 and had an ace time. We were keen to go somewhere that wasn’t swelteringly hot at this time of year, as that can be tricky to manage with a small person in tow. And we also wanted there to be lots of fun stuff to do, so this got a double tick.

I found blogs written by other parents who have been to Denmark with children really helpful, so I thought I’d share what we enjoyed too, in case you fancy taking a trip. I recommend it.

Amager Beach Park

Yes, there’s a beach. I was surprised too! We stayed in Amager, which though not in central Copenhagen, is still very handy for getting to and from the airport and around the city. And a particularly cool element of the area is that it has a beach.

We went on our first day, which was a bit on the windy side, and we were all a bit tired and hungry, but that says nothing about the beach and everything about our ability to plan.

We still had a nice wander around and a look out to sea, and I’m sure that on a calmer day and with full stomachs it would make for a really great trip out. My toddler had a good time jumping about in the sand, because that’s fun whatever the weather.

The LEGO store, Copenhagen

We did the next four activities in one day, starting with a visit to Copenhagen’s LEGO store, because, well, when in Rome.

I’d seen a visit to the store recommended on another blog and I’m so glad we went because our daughter loved it. Of course she did – it’s brightly coloured, there are giant (to her, anyway) LEGO figures to point at, and she could touch and play and run around, which is pretty much all she wants from life.

I thought it was brilliant too. Long time readers will know that I’m not exactly a Star Wars enthusiast (my first ever Star Wars film viewing was embarrassingly recent), but I still thought the LEGO stormtrooper, R2-D2 and C-3PO (yes I had to google the names of the last two) were pretty cool. And I liked Nyhavn Harbour just as much in miniature as I did in real life.

All in all it made for a very fun 20 minute stop.

Hans Christian Andersen Fairytale House

About a five minute walk from the LEGO store is this slightly creepy, but actually very sweet and fun little fairytale house. Again, it felt only right to engage with something so very Danish whilst in Denmark, so in we went.

Right next to Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, this is a small interactive museum that takes you through the life and stories of Hans Christian Andersen. We went with a speedy 19 month old, so anything that didn’t light up or play music failed to get her attention. That meant we passed through the first few historical-focused bits pretty quickly as they were too dark to catch her eye.

But when we got to the sections devoted to each story, she was much more engaged. There were buttons to press and figures that moved (the ballerina she’s pointing at above was a favourite) and she seemed to find it all very entertaining.

The adults were all childishly amused by the proud-looking naked emperor in the Emperor’s New Clothes exhibit whose reflection somehow magically became clothed in the mirror, so that was 180 DKK well spent (it’s 60 DKK each to get in).

They warn you on the door that it doesn’t take long to get around the house, as it’s only a small place, but we still thought it was worth it. You don’t do anything for very long with a small person anyway, do you, so another 20 minutes or so of fun was enough for us before lunch.

Torvehallerne Food Market

I absolutely bloody love a food market on holiday. Can’t get enough of them. We walked over here post LEGO/fairytale excitement and after feeling a bit overwhelmed by the amazing choice of food on offer, we settled on a couple of salmon and broccoli quiches and ate them outside.

It definitely would have been better for us if we’d been able to find a highchair, as our daughter became understandably keen to escape our laps and tear around, but it was still fun to be there and to eat tasty food in the sunshine.

I have this thing for purchasing nectarines whilst on holiday – are they juicier abroad, somehow? – so I bagged us six from the market before we left and then shared one a day with our toddler in the afternoon whilst we recovered from a day out with an episode of Peppa Pig. It became a lovely, if sticky, little ritual.

Tivoli Gardens

After lunch at the market and with a sleeping toddler in the pram, we headed into Tivoli. Not your average theme park, Tivoli doesn’t just have rides and roller coasters, it’s also home to beautiful gardens, which are ideal for a sit or a toddle around.

My husband took the opportunity to go on ‘The Demon’ roller coaster with our friend whilst our daughter slept and I pretended to be sorry not to go on it too (the constant highs and lows of parenting are enough of an adrenaline rush for me nowadays).

When our toddler woke up, it was great to take her for a walk around Tivoli so she could take it all in. There are rides that are suitable for little ones, but we didn’t feel confident she was ready for that kind of thing, so we just stuck to strolling for now, which was lovely. It was an ideal way to spend a couple of hours in the afternoon before we headed home for tea.

National Aquarium Denmark, Den Blå Planet

Aquariums are ace for small children and I thought this one was particularly great. It’s the biggest in Northern Europe and set in a beautifully designed, modern building overlooking the sea.

There’s so much to see, from hammerhead sharks, stingrays and turtles, to tropical fish, piranhas and – my personal favourite – sea otters. I love the tanks that come low enough for toddlers to see everything without having to be picked up by an adult, so they can be free to point and wave and move around as much as they like.

The tunnel through ‘The Ocean’ is a particular highlight for everybody, and our daughter also loved playing in the toy submarine and sitting in a giant neon (fake) sea anemone – because who wouldn’t?

As a Brit who’s used to pretty crappy food options at large-scale child-focused attractions, I assumed there would be nothing worth eating on offer at the aquarium, but I was wrong. The restaurant is great – we sat outside overlooking the sea and ate fishcakes and chips. All round, an excellent day out.

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

This is the coolest art gallery I’ve ever been to. Not many come with their own sculpture park and a sea view, but now that I’ve been here, I wish they all did. If you have time for a day outside of the city, this is definitely worth a trip. (Take a train to Humlebæk. It took us about an hour.)

From a toddler perspective, the grounds are definitely the best bit. There’s lots of space to run around, huge trees, and interesting sculptures to look at and hide behind. I only wish it hadn’t rained when we were there so we could have spent more time outside.

There’s a great café which, again, sells nice food for everyone, including delicious coconut macarons I can’t stop thinking about.

Taking a toddler around the gallery is fun too as there’s lots to see and long corridors to wander through, but I must admit it was easier when she went into her pram for a nap and we could have a proper look around without worrying she’d somehow accidentally get us thrown out.

So I recommend going when nap time is on the horizon so you can have a nice dose of grown up culture time too. There’s an exhibition by Pipilotti Rist on at the moment and we absolutely loved it.

Copenhagen Zoo

We had such a fun time at the zoo. We’d never taken our daughter to a big zoo before, so it was very special for all of us. And not only does this one have every creature you’d normally hope to see, it also has polar bears. I honestly don’t know which of us was more excited. There’s a great enclosure where they swim right in front of you and over your heads and it’s amazing.

Other highlights included the wonderful elephant house (until one of them trumpeted so loud that it scared the living daylights out of all of us and proved that the noise I’ve led my daughter to believe they make is way too cute), the lions, the chimpanzees and the Savanna, which is home to giraffes, zebras and rhinos.

And once again the food was lovely. Honestly, UK attractions really need to up their game. We ate at FOLK and shared fishcakes and meatballs. Seeing as we obviously couldn’t go out in the evenings and engage in the more grown up culinary delights Copenhagen had to offer, it was a genuine joy to find such nice food to eat during days out.

So in summary, Copenhagen is great. We did a lot, so we were exhausted by the time we got back to London, but it was worth it.

If you go, I hope you have a wonderful time too. And if you have any comments or questions, please feel free to get in touch!

Four things you should not do in hot weather

27/07/2014 by Charlotte 2 Comments

It’s hot out there. Even hotter when you have a laptop resting on your legs, as I’m currently discovering.

And though summer lifts our spirits, sends our consumption of cucumber filled drinks through the roof, and gives our feet a well-earned break from their usual woolly prisons, there are some aspects of life that are a little trickier during a heatwave.

This doesn’t mean summer is a bad thing – it is, in fact, the best thing since spring – we just need to adjust ourselves to cope with the sudden presence of a burning ball of fire in the sky.

And whilst magazines tell us what we should do in the heat – wear sun cream, buy a hat, consume our five-a-day (one Mars ice cream, two Soleros, and two Mini Milks), they don’t tend to tell us what we shouldn’t do. So I am here to do just that – here are four things I recommend you avoid doing on a hot day:

1. Sit down for any length of time
I’d forgotten how much a human being can sweat from the leg: a lot. And the problem with sitting down – the main activity a person wants to do to avoid passing out from heat exhaustion – is that it gives your legs the opportunity to really get cooking. It’s a well-known fact that there are places on the human body from which one is expected to sweat. I’m not saying I like it; I don’t have a photograph of a damp armpit as my screen saver; it’s just that everybody knows that it happens and generally has the manners to ignore it. But if you stand up to reveal that the backs of your legs have suddenly turned into Niagara Falls, that is going to come as something of a surprise to nearby citizens. So I recommend that you keep moving. Or if you do have to sit down for a long period, you may wish to adopt my extremely attractive tactic of rearranging whichever piece of clothing you’ve chosen to wear that day so that any such perspiration is absorbed by your chair. Form an orderly queue, boys!

2. Attempt physical contact
I tried to hold my husband’s hand last night on the way back from a restaurant. The last time he looked at me like that – like perhaps I didn’t know how life works – was when I managed to hit him on the head with a stone I was attempted to skim, even though he was standing behind me. Of course he didn’t want to hold my hand; it was all he could do to get through the walk home without melting. Advertising would have us believe that summer is such a sexy time of year – I’ll prance about in a bikini before my other half carries me across the beach on his back and then hilariously pretends to hurl me into the sea. This is not reality. What couples actually do in hot weather is go on strike from all physical contact. There is no prancing, more dragging of our hot, swollen feet. There are no piggybacks, just one person walking ahead of the other saying “I JUST WANT TO GET HOME AND INTO THE SHOWER!” and there are no amusing attempts to throw me into open water (though if I try to grab my husband’s hand again, that may change). It’s every man and woman for themselves in this weather. We’ll put our wedding rings back on in the autumn.

3. Straighten your hair
Let me ask you a question – do you feel like doing ironing right now? No? And, how about ironing your hair? Of course not. This is not the time to be subjecting your boiling brain to hot metal plates. And even if you did, and you managed to survive the experience without drowning in a pool of your own salty tears, if your hair is anything like mine, it’ll either just stick to the sides of your head (making me look like Peter Andre in the Mysterious Girl video) or it’ll expand to the size of a small bush. It’s just not worth the effort.

4. Wear make-up
The other day I left the house wearing a full face of make-up. Two hours later I went to the bathroom to discover that said make-up had travelled so far from where I had originally put it that it looked like somebody had taken a damp flannel to my cheeks. And to make it even better, I’d had at least two face to face conversations during that time with people who, unless temporarily blinded by the perspiration shine on my forehead, will definitely have noticed. Thanks for letting me know, guys! So I won’t be doing that again. These cheeks are staying bare until the weather drops a few degrees (that’s my facial cheeks, before you panic. It’ll never be that hot).

*mops brow* So there you have it. If you keep your hands to yourself, your foundation in its bottle, your hair in a ponytail and your legs-a-moving, you’ll survive the heatwave no problem.

Oh and one more thing – if the last two hours has taught me anything it’s that if you must use a laptop on a hot day, make sure you put it on a table. My knees are now so warm that I don’t think even an ice cream could cool me down. Though I will, of course, give it a try.

How a woman’s wardrobe changes with age

11/08/2013 by Charlotte 1 Comment

If you’re ever under any illusions about how old you really are, clear out your wardrobe.

I did mine today and, as a result, can confirm that my youth is officially over.

This is not because my wardrobe is filled with pop socks, nighties and blouses, although of course all do feature, but it’s certainly no Tammy Girl up there either. (That’s where all the young people shop, right?)

As a woman of 28, I can tell you that our late twenties mark a turning point when it comes to clothes. Our priorities and shopping habits have changed a lot since our happy-go-lucky, what-does-it-matter-if-people-can-see-a-bit-of-butt days.

When I went through my wardrobe today, aside from being a little embarrassed by just how many garments a human being can own (it’s not a number I ever learnt to count up to), I noticed a number of things about my clothes that confirm I am no longer as young as I was:

1. I own very few skirts or dresses that I could get away with wearing without leggings. If I did and there was a gust of wind, I could cause a solar eclipse.

2. I now notice when things have gone ‘bobbly’ (but have absolutely no idea how to stop it happening).

3. Most of my ‘going out tops’ have now been demoted to ‘work tops’.

4. A large section of my wardrobe is dedicated to ‘Dresses to wear to weddings’. I considered rebranding them as ‘Party dresses’ but that would misrepresent my social life.

5. The number of jackets I own has gone up dramatically in the last two years. I’d like to say it’s because my look has got sharper but it’s actually just part of my on-going Breeze Defence Campaign.

6. At some point very soon, I am going to need another cardigan shelf.

7. I have a collection of clothes I only wear when on holiday, extremely hot, and there is absolutely no risk of seeing anybody in the vicinity again. e.g. boob tubes, extra short-shorts, and dresses that would be deemed indecent anywhere but the beach.

8. I am keeping hold of the all-glitter dress I wore to my hen do as a reminder that there was once a point in my life when it was appropriate to wear such a thing. I’m sure I won’t believe it in ten years’ time.

9. The only reason I have kept some pieces of clothing is because they are a size 6 and I can still do them up. Whether I can walk or sit down in them is a different matter.

10. I own five pairs of skinny jeans but I can only get them on by jumping up and down on the spot. If this wasn’t my only source of exercise, I’d bin them all.

It’s probably best to have a wardrobe that matches my age.

The alternative is to fill it with crop-tops (which seem have to reappeared from the nineties) or spend the rest of the year prancing around in playsuits pretending to be young when all I can think about it how chilly I’ll get when I have to take the entire thing off to go to the toilet. It’s best to embrace who you are.

And in my case, that’s a grown up; one with a lot of coats, even more cardigans, and enough leggings to hide a thousand sins.

If I can just figure out how to stop them going bobbly, my transformation will be complete.

WARNING: Women wear fewer clothes in hot weather

28/07/2013 by Charlotte 2 Comments

I think there’s been a misunderstanding.

I don’t remember seeing an announcement from the DVLA to say that, during a heatwave, car owners are permitted to drive with their face pressed against their window if a woman walks past wearing anything above the knee.

Nor do I recall attaching a BEEP IF YOU CAN SEE SKIN sign to my back when I put my skirt on this morning.

And actually, now I come to mention it, I’m struggling to locate a news story reporting that this is the first summer that some men have been outside.

But there must have been otherwise what could explain what’s been happening?

It’s hot out there. The weather is as close as Bert is to Ernie, as Jaffa Cakes are to perfection… It’s so hot that when I come out the shower I’m not sure if I’m drying water or sweat off my skin. It’s a very sexy time.

And to avoid passing out, we girls wear a little less than usual; we slip on a skirt, climb into shorts, opt for a strap instead of a sleeve, maybe we’ll wear a shoe with an open toe… Feel free to loosen your collar if this is getting too much for you.

And most people are cool with it; they’re so busy applying Factor 50 that they wouldn’t give a damn if we walked around naked. But for a few it’s just too much. Their flesh detector goes off and all of a sudden they’re like a dog catching sight of a ball: Look! It’s a ball! Walk-based propaganda has led me to believe that I like balls! And that I must run at them! And bark at them! And stare at them until I dribble!

I know, I know, marketing can be misleading. But here’s the thing: I ain’t no ball. And nor is the girl in front of me, or the one ahead of her. We’re just boiling and it would be a lot easier if our decision to sport a sundress didn’t spark a car horn toot-off.

Now don’t misread – this is not a compliment, it’s intimidating. Having a stranger leering at you like you’re spinning around a rotisserie is nasty and demeaning and enough to make us stay indoors until the leaves start falling off the trees.

But then, when you think about it, it really isn’t surprising that this still happens. Did you know that – even in this modern age of 2013 – we still live in a world where women are treated like ogling fodder by some members of the national press? Did you know that some newspapers STILL publish photographs of topless women on page three for every man, woman and child to behold? In 2013! I know, amazing isn’t it. If they will tell the world that our flesh is there for their entertainment, what hope have we got when the summer comes? It’s National Ogling Season, surely?

Of course there are lots of other things to blame too – these car-horn-beepers probably don’t know how belittling it feels, or forget that their wife, mother or daughter could be getting the same treatment, or perhaps their driving instructor just forgot to tell them to look straight ahead whilst in charge of a vehicle… but it certainly doesn’t help.

But thankfully there is an answer. The wonderful No More Page 3 campaign, which, as the name suggests, wants to get rid of this outdated tradition. There’ll still be news and sport and perhaps even the occasional Sudoku to keep you busy – just no naked female bodies to stare at, which I think is for the best.

I’ll wear what I want to wear, you wear what you want to wear and we’ll all keep our eyes on the road. Deal? I thought you’d come round, now do sign this, won’t you.

Just remember to pull over before you do.

All walk and no trousers

23/06/2013 by Charlotte 1 Comment

In every other respect it was the perfect walk to work.

The sun was out, the birds were singing, and the make-up I’d slapped on at a pace was melting down my face in the unexpected heat. “Just let it slide,” I thought, “What’s a bit of perspiration of a commute? You can always reapply later.” My spirits were high.

And then a van pulled up. Two men were at the helm and their vehicle’s branding suggested that work was about to happen. If that had been the only thing I’d noticed my walk would have carried on untarnished.

But then one of them got out and I was presented with what can only be described as a his semi-bare arse. With his grey jogging trousers worn at half-mast, he was reduced to nothing but skin and waistband, with too much of both on display.

The good news is that he didn’t see me catch this glimpse, as I fear my expression could have damaged his self-confidence. Even I, in this fair city of London with its all-day drinking and open top buses, am surprised to be mooned at before nine o’clock.

Just days later, when I had filed this incident as a one-off, I was on an escalator and had selected ‘ahead’ for my direction of gaze (taken from the standard London options of Down, At my book, Ahead or, if under the influence/crazy, Hard into my palm) and, as a result, I had full sight of the woman who walked up the stairs with her jeans and undergarments no less than a third of the way down her bottom.

And THEN – because these things always come in threes, I’ve learnt – a woman came to sit on a stall in front of me in Pret and chatted to her chum with so much of her lower back and upper butt out that I could have used her skin for a table.

“Are they seeking me out?” I thought. “Are there just going to be bare bottoms everywhere I go from now on? Is that my thing?” “Don’t go out with Charlotte,” they’ll say, “One minute you’re chomping on a burrito, the next you’ll have a cheek in your face – she’s a butt magnet.”

It’s not so much that I am offended by these sights – though don’t get me wrong, they’re not my screensaver – I just don’t understand them. I don’t even like a faint breeze to touch my midriff (thank goodness for vests, eh ladies) so the idea of my behind having a day out is unthinkable. I can only assume that these people either like feeling the weather on their nethers or that they’re just enjoying life so much that they haven’t noticed their own nudity.

My question is: where does it end? If this is their standard position whilst just hanging out by a car, going up an escalator or supping a latte, what happens when they’re really relaxed? If half-moon is your starting point at 8am, what comes out after the watershed?

I’m not sure, but I don’t think I want to be there to find out.